Some of the details of Mitose's story as told here are now known to not be quite accurate, but generally it is close enough.

The family tree shows Cerio as a student of Chow, but really he should be 2 steps under Sonny Gascon (Gascon-Pesare-Cerio) Cerio did go take some lessons from Chow later on, like after he had multiple black belts from Pesare and Parker already. So I don't think it is accurate to show him as Chow's descendant so directly. NCK is derived directly from Karazenpo Go Shinjutsu (Sonny Gascon's art) and Cerio's previous study before he met Pesare (TKD and Judo I beleive).

Well it is 10 years old so a lot has changed since then in Kenpo I assume. But in all honesty I got more out of that then I did searching all the back topics in this forum.

The people that answered did a great jobs saying what the different histories of each style was. i.e. who formed Shaolin, who formed Chinese, who formed Tracy, etc.

But this one kinda gave light (at least to me) what the actual differences between them were. For example in the FAQ I learned that "Fred Villari's system tends more towards the Kung-Fu element and utilizes the techniques of the 5 animal Chuan Fa to a large extent. Added to the Kempo system was white tiger Chin na techniques as well as various Aikijutsu projections and immobilizations." and that "The Cerio kenpo school believe in the "old method of training", and teaches most of the shotokan forms, kung fu and kajukenbo forms, TKD kicks, Japanease stances, as well as Jujtusu. Weapons of both Chinease and Japanease systems are taught and maintains many traditional forms."

Maybe one of you Kenpoists can e-mail the creator and update it. Or maybe use it as a template to make a new FAQ.

If I remember correctly this fax has been floating around the web for a while now. I don't remember exactly where it originated, but I know that once I read a disclamer stating that the FAQ was a re-typing of the original and the poster admitted that any spelling or grammatical errors were purely theirs and did not come from the original author.

I don’t know where this sort of information can be reliably referenced to. I have made similar claims as David in the past, although my understanding is that it is the largest single martial arts organisation; however these claims are not based on any official government statistics that I now of. Regarding Judo I really don’t know, it was very popular as it was in many schools. In this regard Shorinji Kempo has mirrored it as it is now practiced in many schools too.

I feel David is correct in dismissing as poorly researched a FAQ sheet on Kempo if it does not list Shorinji Kempo. Shorinji Kempo does have a very high profile in Japan, in fact it is the only Kempo style on the Nippon Budo Shingikai committee that researched and developed the Budo Charter (Budo Kensho). In Japan there are 3950 branches of Shorinji Kempo, there could be more Karate dojo’s, but they belong to many different organisational bodies. Shorinji Kempo at this stage has 1’500’000 members practicing in 32 countries. That is a lot of people to ignore when producing a FAQ sheet and displays a level of ignorance regarding the subject.

Kyokushinkai is certainly a large organisation. Just recently Black Belt magazine did a story on Shorinji Kempo and stated that it was the largest single martial arts body in the world, where they got their information from and how accurate it is I don’t know. Personally I don’t think the size is all that important, but it can help people to realise that just because they have not heard of it, or that there is not a dojo near their home, there are still many people on a global level practicing it.

We do randori, which could be described as sparing. It can be done in a number of different ways depending on the focus of the training session. It can also be done with or without protectors, but the official policy is to use protectors as we had some Japanese university students die during randori about 15 years ago. We don’t have rounds, we continue until told to stop. At a senior level there are no banned targets or techniques and strikes are full power, but at junior levels there is usually some sort of limit to how the randori will be done. This could be light contact only, designated attacker defender, selected target areas and or selected techniques like punching only or kicking only.

We also do randori for juho. At a senior level this could be combined with goho randori, but at junior levels it is usually done on it’s own. Once again there can be a number of ways to conduct this randori depending on skill levels and training session aims. Our juho is quite different to Judo type grappling although it is based on defending from that type of attack. We do learn these types of attacks, but only so we can learn to defend against them properly. The throws are more like the older jujutsu type techniques that use pain to move the attacker into an unbalanced state. We also use many different types of joint locks, pins and chokes.

One thing that makes our randori a little different is that there are no winners or losers; it is not a competition (although randori competitions are popular with young university students) randori, as with all Shorinji Kempo should be done so that both parties get the most benefit from it. This could mean that when two people randori one may be significantly more skilled than the other. This may mean that they could completely dominate the other and therefore destroy any learning opportunities the training partner has. A more productive role would be for the more skilled practitioner to back of a little, keep the randori challenging, but still allow the partner to experiment with techniques.

That does need some clarification. Eye gouges, throat strikes, knee breaks, joint dislocations, strikes and kicks along the spinal column, are done at full power?

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Some clarification. Joint locks can be tapped out of; you don’t have to break the joint. Shorinji Kempo is a Buddhist religion, as such we try not to cause major or permanent damage, but rather control the aggressor. Injuries are prevented in randori by the overall philosophy of the style. We are all there to learn, not become world champion, randori is non competitive. If I injure my training partner I won’t be able to train, so it is in my interest to control my techniques so as not to cause great harm. However when I randori I must be mindful that any attack could occur. As I mentioned we have had some deaths from randori, these were due to students being knocked out then falling backwards hitting their head on the floor (we train on wooden floors despite the throws we use). This is why we usually use protective gear now. It is possible to randori without bogu (protective gear), but it requires a different attitude. If I am doing randori with bogu I will really try to put as much force as I can into my strikes. If I am doing randori with no bogu I will be careful about how hard I strike and to which target I use. For example a punch to the stomach will have much more power attached to it than say a kick to the groin. Another safety factor is the sensei, as soon as it is evident that one of the students is being overwhelmed and in danger they will halt the match so they can recover. This limits the amount of severe hits you may receive.

A further clarification. Randori does not always have to be hard-core. It can be limited to concentrate on specific areas of training, or it can be just fun thing, light and not so fast and performed with good spirits. This can remove some of the pressure and allow newer techniques to be experimented with. There are many different forms of randori and they all have their place in the development of kenshi.

I believe Ralph Castro studied directly under Chow with Ed Parker.
I find it funny when the Villari people say they have a Kung-Fu influence. The closest thing to Kung-Fu is whatever they retained from Parker, which came from Chow, etc